Tag Archives: family

My family was never wealthy, but for my entire life we’ve been more than comfortable–comfortable enough to not pay close attention to our spending. While we never took lavish vacations (unless paid for by points acquired through my father’s work), we didn’t budget. We should have.

As an adult with my own job and an understanding of the value of a dollar (and my motto – no matter how much you make, every cent counts), I’ve managed to build up a networth of over $650k, give or take, at age 35. I want to be proud of that. I want to enjoy this as some sort of accomplishment. But I can’t. I can’t because I feel incredibly guilty and lost when it comes to helping my mother out of the financial mess she is in right now.

Some may look at her situation and say it’s not that bad. I guess it isn’t, but it will be soon if she doesn’t plug up the holes in her sinking ship. Not all of the holes are her fault–but she’s just so delusional and has no ability to stop spending. It is impossible for me to advise her beyond subtle suggestion that she cease spending when my parents paid for my college education, a nice wedding, and an overall nice life. Part of me feels like I ought to help her out and provide the funds to plug up some of those holes. And–most of me knows that even if I were to give her my entire $650k, she’d still find a way to burn through it.

This is a long story… a very long story… and one that is keeping me up at 2am with a newborn who is sleeping so I really ought to be sleeping. I can’t sleep. I can’t do anything but let my mind spin on this giant dilemma, trying to find some sort of solution to the puzzle. There isn’t one that’s pretty or that my mother will agree to. But, after sitting back and letting my recently-deceased father make a mess of the finances in his last years of life (not that I had much say in that, but I could have maybe done something… more on that in a minute)… I feel like NOW I have the opportunity to stop this sinking ship before it reaches the bottom of the ocean.

The picture was looking rather unfortunate on the first go-round of budget vs income that I quickly ran after my father passed away this summer and my mother had to make some decisions about her social security survivor’s benefits (which are confusing as hell, yet to be fully understood, and the subject of another post I’ll write one day.)

As we did more digging, we uncovered that in 2014 there was $1M in an IRA. By 2017, only $400k remained. During that time, there was the purchase of a second home which cost, including renovations, about $100k (or maybe more because my parents seemed to always underestimate the cost of their renovations and not keep tab.) There was my wedding, which, at $50k, was a lovely affair and something that made my dying father beam with joy, but was an event that never should have happened given the financial situation my father either somehow didn’t understand or hid from me and the family. He said, over and over again, he had $50k set aside for my wedding and $50k for my sister’s. He said many things. I’ll never know if he was delusional due to the cancer drugs, unrelated mental illness, old age, or maybe just a serial liar–to not only us but himself.

When he was working he was bringing in good money, at least for a middle class household. Ironically the man who left his family without a stable retirement spent his life’s work as an actuary–planning pensions for companies and accessing risk of running out of money to fund those pensions. I try to find humor in this.

But then, and I guess I didn’t realize this since I was already away at college, he stopped working around age 55 due to his obesity and mobility issues, and then shortly after that began collecting disability. His work paid out nicely for a few years, and also offered a good pension, but the reality was (and where I was blind sighted is) that the amount coming in did not cover the amount spent. I don’t know the exact gap, but it was substantial, and ignored.

Although the wedding was a big expense and the second home purchase wasn’t for pennies, what really did them in, based on my research into the last 10 years of spending, was their crazy high expenses. My mother, ever in denial, would say she doesn’t spend like rich people do, then come home with piles of clothes “on sale” from Chicos or some “non luxury” store, not to mention a pile of face creams on auto-purchase from QVC and who knows what else. Then, there was the dining out bills, and the $600-a-month house cleaning services (I’ve convinced her to drop that to 2x at $300 a month.)

I’m not one to judge how they spent their money — they had a right to spend it any way they wanted. And I understand my father, facing certain death, wanted to enjoy his limited wealth in his final years. It was just the perfect storm of financial chaos. Even his long term care policy, dutifully paid into for many years, likely costing over $20,000, ended up going unused because he refused to admit he was dying–or, perhaps because he realized that the policy didn’t actually cover enough to not require dipping further into the shrinking retirement savings left.

With this, I’m left to wonder if my father, as ill as he was, didn’t go to doctors outside of his cancer doctor because he hated going to the doctor–or, if part of this was because he couldn’t afford the treatment. In the end it wasn’t the cancer that killed him, but issues with his heart and blood pressure–perhaps related to his cancer treatments, but undoubtedly something he could have had treated better over his life and especially those final years… but he chose to only focus on his cancer. If his goal was to die of something other than cancer, then he succeeded. I’m pretty sure his goal was to live forever and he couldn’t think of the world any other way. I get that, no one wants to admit they’re dying–but when you are facing a terminal illness and are told you have 2 years to live (and then you manage to live more than 10) at the very least you can pick out a funeral plot and prepay for a burial, not leaving your wife to run around to cemeteries the day after you die to pay the highest possible amount for both of your graves (yes, this happened. Yes, I was out-of-my-mind with a one-week-old at this time, trying to provide advice.)

But now–now the biggest issue, and the one I find saddest–is that we’ve uncovered a horrible situation regarding taxes. Taxes unfiled and unpaid. All of the numbers I’ve been running to try to save her primary home in the northeast–which, while worth $500k, has a $200k home equity loan out on it, by the way–were thrown out the window. And I threw my hands in the air. I give up. This is looking bleak. Sure, she can cut all of her spending. She can stop the house cleaning services and limit work on the house to only vital fixes for a while… nothing cosmetic. But even then, she starts dipping into that small $400k IRA immediately–which shrinks to almost nothing after the taxes are paid, and she has nothing left to pay the home equity that comes due in 2020 and flips to principle and interest at 3x what she’s currently paying.

In short, the only real answer is to sell one of the properties, and sooner than either of us would like. I’ve told her clearly that the northeast home, while a place that holds all of my memories as a child, and one I’d love to keep, is a complete money suck and sadly I think it needs to go. She agrees, but wants years to clean it out (she’s a hoarder and my attempts to help her get rid of things on my last visit, outside of taking care of a 3 month old, did not make a lot of progress.) I selfishly want the house to stick around for a while too–although it won’t be the home for my “dream” visits with my family… holiday visits to grandma and grandma — long summer nights with my kid(s) playing in the backyard through the sprinklers, running after fireflies like I did as a child–I thought maybe a smidgen of this could exist.

I know a house is just home and a home is just a house. I’ve lived enough places since leaving that house now… gasp… 18 years ago. I mean, I knew, deep down, we couldn’t hold on to it forever. Mom would move out when dad died at some point. But either time went by too fast or I didn’t think it would be this soon. She clearly wants to stay there… but it’s not possible, especially not with the vacation home as well.

She could potentially sell the vacation home, which would pay off some of the home equity. But she doesn’t want to do that, and I think it wouldn’t be wise anyway–they invested quite a bit in renovating that property and, while it’s small, it is a good place for her to live in her “young” old age. Even though some of her friends still live in our development in the northeast, many are moving away, and few still go to the social gatherings she goes to–whereas the 55+ community with the vacation home is filled with active seniors, at least in the winter months. I’m worried about how she’ll like it there in the summer when it gets extremely hot with violent storms and most of the residents leave to the north–but maybe she’ll be ok. She seems to find people to talk to wherever she goes (or talk “at”, but to her there’s no difference and she’s pleased either way.) So, the financial planner in me says — get her out of the northeast home as fast as possible. Like, yesterday fast.

But she’s committed to not moving until at least 2020, and she still thinks she can make it there much longer. She keeps asking me how long she can stay and I try to explain to her that there’s no exact number because the question becomes how much she needs left in her IRA to grow to afford her lifestyle–AND what is going to happen to her later in life if she needs long term care (since my father cancelled her long term care policy years ago saying it was too expensive.)

Now, she does have an after-tax income of $60k+ per year once she gets full social security benefits. That’s pretty darned good. If she had one home, especially one home that doesn’t cost as much as one with a lot of property and an aging architecture, then maybe she’ll be fine. She can sell the house, pay off the home equity, take the remaining $250k or so to pay off the taxes (est $80k) and family loan ($30k), and then take the remaining $150k and, ideally, invest that somewhere safe, while slowly drawing down the IRA and minimizing tax damage in the future.

She could, alternately, sell the vacation condo and put that money into the northeast home, but the costs are just too high there and she’ll still run out of money. I think with the vacation home she can actually live on her income, even if she wants to travel to visit her grandson or spend some time in NY.

The problem is, the longer she stays in the NJ home, the harder it is to ensure her life when she moves is financially ok. What I don’t want to happen is that she burns through her IRA in a few years because of credit card bills and loans and having to pay this ridiculous amount of taxes that sadly are just so high because of penalties due to my father not filing (yes, getting to that in a minute)…

So the taxes… I really don’t know what happened. My father always, ALWAYS paid the right amount each year. He didn’t always file on time–but if you pay the right amount and don’t file the IRS doesn’t actually care. Somehow, whether on purpose or by massive mistake, he was short about $23k one year and $18k the next. The $42k in taxes owed is crappy, but the penalties on that because it was never fixed are what is extraordinarily sad. For that money, not only did he take too much out of the IRA in two years to cause such high taxes owed, but he ALSO then didn’t pay those taxes or file or anything. I want to ask him WHY? But I can’t. Because, you know, he died. And I’m still dealing with processing that and all these feelings I have around wanting to empathize with him for being such a sad, sick man but also then being angry and grateful and who knows what else–is why I can’t sleep.

I’m now looking at any tax relief available to my mother, but it seems unlikely she will get any help from the IRS. Innocent Spouse theoretically applies to her–my father was abusive to her for years and refused to let her partake in household finances, even when she offered, and later, begged–especially regarding the taxes. He would yell at her and occasionally become violent. There are even police records of this (though not in the years the taxes are owed.) But “innocent spouse,” as far as I can tell, is for partners who lied on their returns. Well, he didn’t file a return, so there’s not much innocent spouse we can claim…

Now there is an abatement of penalty clause where, if you were in good standing the 3 years before the year you failed to file, you can get the penalties waived for that one year. But you only get to do this once. Not only was my father failing to file year after year (always having paid the full amount on time except apparently in 2011 when he had a small payment plan), it’s impossible to know if he already requested this one time penalty abatement. There are no records. He did all of his own taxes. My mother is perplexed–after going through all the of the papers… she says to me, it doesn’t make sense–where are all the taxes? The papers from the IRS?

My theory is he, either strategically or in a rage or in a fit of paranoia, threw them all out one day. Maybe he just straight up lost his mind and got rid of a box of important things by accident. Maybe he realized he did that and was so ashamed he just gave up on ever doing the taxes. Who knows.

One thing is for sure – he refused help–even from his few close friends and his family. And, for a man who said he wanted to leave his family with wealth and ensure his wife was financially ok for the rest of her life (which never made sense to me given how emotionally abusive to her on a daily basis) he sure made quite the mess. He just couldn’t admit he was struggling. He had way too much pride. And, in his final years, he didn’t want to accept his mortality. He told my mother she was overspending, but then he’d overspend himself. He once asked my mother how much my aunt and uncle gave me for my wedding — $500. He immediately wrote out a check to their daughter for $600! It wasn’t about generosity with him, though he’d like you to think it was. It was always about showing off how generous he was.

Even during the year of my wedding–I offered to pay for more of the wedding up front, even if he wanted to pay, so he wouldn’t have to withdraw so much out of his IRA that year. I knew the taxes would be high. No, he said. He was offended by the suggestion. He had the money and he wanted to spend it. Yes, I have guilt for spending it, but I didn’t know how bad things looked. Last I heard there was still $1M in the bank and a home that was paid off. I failed to dig in too much–but as blind as I was with eyes shut to the downfall of the great American dream, my mother seemed to have clawed her eyes out in order to be incapable of looking.

So now what? I have my own life to sort out here. I’m doing well, but have a long way to go. My first batch of RSUs vest in a few weeks… and with that I should have a $50k bonus after tax (should the stock market not completely disintegrate before Christmas) and I could say, you know what, mom, you guys paid for my college and wedding, and now I’m gifting you $50k (or, $15k in 2018 and $15k in 2019 and so on.) But what good would that really do? She needs to understand the value of money. I think I’m starting to get through to her a little bit. I paid for dinner the other night and she actually said thank you. It’s not that I want her to have to thank me – it’s that I want her to realize the value of a dollar. It may be too late to fix this mess… but maybe it isn’t. Maybe I can gift her a happy next however many years she has… for as narcissistic and childish as my mother is, I still think she’s been beaten down by an emotionally abusive mother then an emotionally and physically abusive husband, and she deserves the right to happiness in her old age. She has to throw out the clutter and really be wiling to simplify… and that would be good for all of us.

I just don’t know if I can convince her of this in time, and also let go from my crazy ideas to “save” my childhood home by either purchasing it or providing enough money in gift form to pay off the home equity or… plenty of bad ideas that not only wouldn’t help stop the bleeding, but also could financially ruin me as well. So I hope we can all make the right decisions and fast enough to stabilize and move on from this challenging period of our lives.

My sister and I surprised my parents this weekend with the news – I’m pregnant. While I envisioned the surprise – in a normal, loving family -to go something like this…

My parents would meet my sister, who was visiting for the weekend, and she would enter their condo and go to her room to pull out a gift from me to give to them, without them knowing. I would call “from the west coast” as a coincidence, to say hi, and they’d mention my sister just arrived. Then my sister would give them the “gift” and they’d open it to see inside something that clearly stated they were going to be grandparents. At the moment they were having a loving, emotional, “we’re so happy for you” reaction, I’d knock on the door and they’d be further surprised that I was there, not across the country, to celebrate with them this wonderful news. We’d embrace and cry, especially since they know and understand how much we’ve wanted children and how hard it has been to get pregnant, and we’d all go out to celebrate, excited for them to be grandparents, excited for my sister to be an aunt, and excited for myself and my husband to soon be bringing new life into the world. Continue reading →

As of today, I’m 7 weeks, 4 days pregnant. Due 8/4/18. I don’t particularly feel 7w4d pregnant, but that’s what the doctor tells me I am, and what my ultrasound reveals. Given I went through infertility treatment, I know pretty much exactly when conception happened. Isn’t science amazing?

Anyway, I’ve yet to tell my parents I’m pregnant. There are a few reasons for this. One, it’s ok to wait until your second trimester to tell anyone you’re with child, given miscarriage rates are high. Continue reading →

What are you supposed to talk about with your family that isn’t god awful over the course of a normal dinner out? I don’t see my family all that often, so you’d think we’d have things to discuss. Yet the conversation usually goes something like this, in no particular order…

How is your job? Do you still have a job? (It’s ok. I still have a job.) There’s nothing really more to discuss about my job because no one understand what I do and it’s not interesting to them, so that’s pretty much the extend of that conversation.

Politics – whoever is in office is doing a good job or isn’t and everyone at the table will have an opinion but according to my dad his is the only right open

Did Mr. HECC apply to grad school yet? Is he going to get another job / figure out what he doing with his life? (*this comes up only when he is not in the room)

Other family issues du jour as long as it’s about “not our direct family” — cousin tried to attempt suicide? Let’s all solve her problem over dinner. Aunt and uncle about to get a divorce? Good idea or bad idea — it’s the perfect time to debate this.

Let’s gossip about whoever else we all know…

Complain about something else…

Be sad for a moment about someone who has passed away…

Return to complaining or gossiping.

Bonus – not yet, but you know they want to bring it up – when are you having kids / buying a house / growing up like a real adult now that you are married…?

Do other families talk about anything else over dinner conversation? I guess all that’s left is entertainment and sports, and since I don’t talk about sports that leaves talking about television or movies or books or other productions. But that conversation is rather bland and again someone at the table has an opinion that must be right even if I hate the show clearly I’m in the wrong on that one.

What should families talk about? Or, for that matter, what should people talk about? I occasionally like to tell stories about things that have happened but most often I don’t know what to say. Even with friends / peers / coworkers this is an issue. I never know what to talk about.

On one hand, moments of my youth feel like just yesterday. On the other, I do feel a very real sense of the time that has passed over the course of my life. I don’t feel old quite yet, but I definitely don’t feel young either. My friends all are having or already have children, fashions are reverting to what was popular when I was in elementary school (the revival of the choker brings on all the feels), and I’m somehow – despite my mental illness – ready to have children. I know it’s going to be very hard, but I feel surprisingly ready. Maybe I’m not logistically ready, but I feel ready from a maturity level, which is an odd thing for me to say, but as I acknowledge that many parents are not actually that mature, I have found confidence in my own future parenting skills.

If all goes to plan, I’ll be pregnant and possibly already with child at this time next year. I have a not-so-secret hope for twins, which is probably the worst thing to wish for, but I have always wanted twins since I was a child and with infertility treatments to help induce fertility (which I need anyway) the odds of having twins are much higher. We don’t have any history of twins in our families so it would be extremely unlikely in the event of a completely unaided conception. but giving what the infertility doc said about my ovaries, natural pregnancy without the help of at least medicine is extremely unlikely. And I’m not getting any younger. Continue reading →

We grew up in a nice suburb of New York where you would run into a mall in 30 minutes any direction you drove unless you were to drive towards the ocean. Our dad went into the city daily for his job that kept him out late, mom stayed home and took care of us by trying to get me to do my homework and fighting the school system to ensure my learning-disabled sister got the access to the education she needed. Outside of my father’s raging temper and my mother’s relentless narcissism and hoarding disorder, life was pretty good. It was all we knew.

I definitely took my class status for granted, and my sister is now learning that she did too. My sister is seven years younger than I am, and with her learning disability also graduated college later than I did. Nonetheless, after going to a private school for special needs students, she managed to obtain a bachelor’s degree from a state school. Unfortunately, that degree didn’t help her much in terms of setting her up for the real world.

I’m 32 going on 33 and my biological clock is tick-tock ticking. If I’m going to have at least one child, it’s most likely going to occur within the next 1-3 years of my life. I have significant savings so I can afford to take time off to have a kid, but that doesn’t make the whole lack of maternity leave situation any less stressful.

The US is still the only developed country that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave. In fact, the US is one of just two countries in the world that doesn’t ensure any paid time off for new moms, according to a report from the International Labor Organization. The other: Papua New Guinea. Continue reading →

When I grew up I knew two things to be fact – my dad was talented at earning money and my mom was equally talented at spending it. My mother constantly complained about us not having a lot of nice things – and we indeed were upper middle class and not a millimeter over the upper class line – but we had it rather great. As my father worked a professional job requiring his math brain, the money kept rolling in. And my mom (and I) would keep spending it.

But despite the “every time we come back from the mall” fights on spending it never was a “real” issue. We weren’t in danger of losing the house. My private college tuition was paid for outright. So was my sister’s private school for a learning disability and then college. Apparently at some point my father’s company was sold and he did fairly well for himself in his stock and income appreciation. My parents should be comfortably set for life and then some.

However my father (who was told he had two years to live about nine years ago, mind you) and my mother have spent and spent and spent post “earning” years and with the stock market underperforming all his estimates about his finances didn’t quite pan out. Shocking for a man who made a career out of calculating risk. Yet, here we are today, with my father looking at all the numbers involved in the family finances and he can’t make heads or tails of it. There’s a massive home equity loan out that has to be paid back fairly soon, and there’s little left on it to borrow at this point anyway. He wanted to spend a lot on my wedding but, now that I better understand their financial situation – I realize it was not a good idea. It’s not that they are broke – they have social security and pension money coming in… about $100k a year. But in order to afford not only my wedding but also a winter condo they bought in the southeast and renovations to that condo and fixing a bunch of things breaking around their main house there is the reality that my dad had to pull out a bunch of money from the IRA bumping him up into a higher tax bracket so most of the income they’re making goes to taxes.

So they have to in the next few years pay back about $200k in home equity. How? The idea seems to be either from a reverse mortgage (which as I learn more about I really don’t like) or taking more money out of the IRA and paying a lot of taxes on it or, well, there aren’t many other options. The money is there, but it isn’t. They’re so much more fortunate than most people their age (due to smart saving at least and the possibility of a one-working-parent household being able to afford a nice life and a decent retirement) but their spending is just out of control. It’s not just my wedding – which theoretically my father had budgeted “forever” for – it’s the lack of acceptance of 1 – what life really costs and 2 – what their life really costs.

My father keeps talking about how they’re going to have to “get frugal” and I can’t help but laugh. They aren’t exactly going on luxury vacations but my parents do spend. My mother has no concept of money and I worry she’s going to eventually spend every last cent of her retirement money leaving her with “just” the monthly income – which at some point may not be enough to pay for her care. I’ll help, of course, as much as I can – but I’m stuck in the reality of my world which = I cannot ever afford a house, I cannot figure out how to save enough for my own/my family’s retirement, even on my current substantial income (which will not last because I’m about to completely crack in my current career and my next step is something less profitable but more personally fulfilling, I hope) – in any case, I’ll need to help out of guilt knowing how much my own life has cost them, but it’s still frustrating that this didn’t have to happen… they were doing so well and then they had to put an addition on the house and had to buy too-nice further for the vacation property and had to get a new dress for every wedding-related event coming up (I’m glad I talked my mother out of purchasing a $2000 dress for my wedding when the $300 dress she got looked WAY better than the one the fancy store was trying to sell her.)

I just worry too because I know that in so many years my father’s cancer will eventually end his life (I hope this is a long time out but who knows) and my mother will – god willing – life a very long time. But as bad with money and gullible as she is she’s suceptable to all sorts of scams and con arts and just about any potential way for her money to disappear. My dad likes to talk to me (so awkwardly) about how he wants my sister and I to get an inheritance – and I can’t comment on that because on and hand I think inheritances are just plain awful and unfair and should not be allowed and on the other hand the world we live in is one where people can or can not afford to, say, buy a house or send their kids to college due to such mini dynasties. It’s not a topic I’m comfortable talking about and I certainly don’t want to be the person held responsible for convincing my mom not to, you know, spend that money that one day would possibly end up trickling down to me and my sister – even though I honestly don’t want it if she needs to spend it, I just don’t want to see her getting conned. I worry I’ll have to be the responsible one because my sister knows nothing about money and clearly I’m the best educated on the topic (I don’t know how that happened but anyway, it happened.)

My father was even asking my advice on how to repay the home equity. I have no idea. $200 is a lot of money. It took me a very long time to save $200. Now I have almost double that. But it’s all locked up in retirement funds and such. It’s about half of the cost of their actual house. I don’t understand home ownership and the whole taking loans out against your property. It seems like he has a really great rate (2 percent?) so maybe that’s a smart/good thing. But it’s only smart insofar as the needed to spend the money. It’s my wedding but it’s more than that for sure. It’s just this nature of spending and spending and spending and being delusional slash not wanting to deal with the time to come when they really do need to be “frugal” in their own middle class sort of way… not something my mother has known how to do for years. I worry they’ll lose their home – though my father said that will never happen – but I’m starting to doubt his ability to predict these things. He seems rather surprised about how much taxes he owes in general and how things add up and money keeps disappearing. He seems perplexed that the stock market didn’t perform strongly so his networth shrunk more than expected and he didn’t have a backup plan to deal with this. And this all has led me to the conclusion that my father – the math guy – the financial industry risk expert – is actually really bad with personal finances. I worry for them, and I also hope somehow I can do better with my own family and wealth. I’m beginning to think that all starts with NOT owning property – EVER. Rent is expensive but at least it’s not handcuffs.

This week, I’ve been reading a slew of posts about how women make less money than men, and why. Mostly, the argument against this being an issue goes, that women tend to work less than men one they have kids, and they also and generally less competitive so of course they don’t make as much money. In every single job negotiation I feel the weight of this on my shoulder, and try my best to negotiate. I have no idea what a man would do in the same situation with my experience, but since my first couple of jobs when I took the starting salary with no negotiation at all, I’ve tried to ask for a little more, and I’ve gotten more ballsy over time. It helps now that I now have competition offers, and I seem to be fairly good at interviewing these days.

On paper, I sound qualified for a very particular type of role and particular type of company. I’m not sure at all how life has sculpted itself to this specific career path, but it has, and I’m locked and loaded into it, full speed ahead until retirement to gain more responsibility, earn more wages, and look back on a very successful professional career. It hit me this week that I’m nearly making $200k (which, even for one of the highest cost of living areas, is one of those numbers that I thought would never be possible — ten years ago I was making $20k.)

Yet as I look ahead to potentially having children / starting a family, I realize that if I have an opportunity to leave this profession and move into something that is more flexible and personally fulfilling, I would. As much as I like money, and as much as I’ve been driven by this random “$500k in networth before I have kids” goal for the entirety of my 20s and early 30s, I just can’t see myself, 10 years from now, in this same type of role. I don’t want to be a vice president or C-level executive. Even though the pay would be great, I have no desire to be that person. I could potentially figure out how to fake who I am enough to get there… given my success getting this far, I have to believe that someone out there would want to offer me such an opportunity one day. And I feel very guilty, that as a woman — as a woman who has an actual chance of getting to the top – I don’t want it.

As I sprint full speed ahead towards my mid 30s and the next phase of my life, I wonder what to do about it. I’m so busy these days with just trying to do my job and do it well and planning my wedding that I don’t have a ton of time to ponder what’s next (which is probably a good thing.) But, as my rent has increased this year by $2040 for the year, and the cost of living in this area shows no signs of refraining its hockey-stick growth, I know that at some point soon, I either need to commit to this career or come up with an exit strategy. I’m leaning towards the exit.

I don’t want to “not work.” I LOVE working. I love collaborating with a team to create new products. I wish I could be a ux designer or product lead. I’ve said that now for 12 years. I’ve failed to make any progress in that direction. I tried to study for the GRE and even booked a test slot and then didn’t go because I hadn’t studied enough. I couldn’t focus. I gave up. I got a better job. I made more money. It became less fiscally responsible to go back to school anyway. I got older. I passed that age when people go to grad school into the age when some people do but they’re much older their classmates. I entered the age where you take online classes or executive programs but only in rare cases do you go back to school for an entirely new career. Sure, people do it, and I may eventually as well, but I’m really getting older now — not old, per se, but old in the sense of I have a career. I have a good career. I manage a department, small as it is, I’m still in a high-level role, and there is so much good in my life that I kick myself every time I want to start over.

At this point, I’m committed to another year or two in my current job. If I do get pregnant then that will certainly be an opportunity to think through what’s next. Of course, if I get pregnant, it will be even harder to change careers. If I opt to apply to grad school for 2017 I’ll be 33 when I start, and I may want to put having kids on hold, which means I likely won’t have kids, which is, at this point, out of the question unless nature says I can’t (also a possibility.) In any case, there has to be some major changes in the next 2-3 years of my life, which will likely include moving to another state, or at the least, finding another career path and opting for lower pay and a lower quality of life here. I know this isn’t something I can maintain. It will be hard to say goodbye to the near-$200k salary, but I know if I figure out how to do something I’m really passionate about, maybe I can get back there over time. Or maybe I can just make less money and live somewhere more affordable. Either way, there are options, and I’ll always feel guilty as a woman for throwing away a successful career, but I have to. I have to rethink my entire life, my goals, and the directed outcomes. I do finally feel ready for a change.

Sorry, folks. I don’t know the silver bullet to a long, happy marriage. I do know that while 50% of Americans end up in a divorce, a large chunk of those who remain married do so unhappily. While marriage isn’t a requirement of a fulfilled, happy life – for many of us, having a lifelong partner is a key factor in our emotional and even financial stability. I used to be opposed to marriage as an old-fashioned idea steeped in religion and generally designed to make women a property of a man. Today, engaged to be married, I’m looking forward to that next stage of commitment. After nearly 10 years of dating, it’s time to lock this in forever.

Unfortunately, for MANY people, marriage isn’t forever. I spent last week “hanging out” with my 50-years young aunt and her either unhappily married or divorced besties. These women, all in their late 40s/early 50s, were all uniquely depressed, and the conversation reminded me why, if I have anything to do about it, I won’t be alone at that age (knock on wood.) It intrigues me how everyone is selfish by nature, and that happy marriages are largely the result of two people willing to be aware of their selfish tendencies and to compromise around many things that, in single life, would not be acceptable. Furthermore, the stress on a marriage that having kids brings is immense, and if the parents do not see eye-to-eye about this, they may be doomed to crumble – as no one wants to think about an intimate evening post fighting about their child’s behavior and what to do about it.

I grew up in a very unhappy, abusive household. My parents, now in their 60s, are still married – but rarely go a day without my father telling my mother, in a not-so-nice tone, that she’s a, and I quote, “fucking idiot.” They are not the spitting image of a good marriage or even a decent one. And both of my mother’s sisters are divorced and not remarried. This tells me a lot about the mentality in that side of the family – one which lacks empathy for others. It makes sense since the three sisters grew up with a very narcissistic mother and each of them have pretty much ended up with narcissists because it’s the only relationship dynamic which feels comfortable to them – the youngest, dating a man who is infinity self-absorbed and incapable of commitment; the middle sister, committed, not married to a man who is not exactly the warm and fuzzy type in terms of being open to people who do not fit his limited view on an acceptable human being (but maybe that’s just because he’s French); and my mother, of course, with my “can do no wrong” father who blames the world for all the problems but never can blame himself for anything.

Without self awareness, I don’t know if it’s possible for people like this to have a sustainable happy marriage. What we’re attracted to is not always best for such arduous happiness. Marriage is work, they say, and it’s true. I see some young couples I worry are headed in the wrong direction. I look at friends who do not seem to be able to talk about serious matters to each other. Friends who are married to men who are mama’s boys and who are worried that when their child is born they will be left alone to do all the housework along with childcare and returning to work. I worry about my friends who don’t talk about their finances, where one partner is stressed about work and the other is firmly committed to not worry about money or how it is spent. I worry about a couple who fight all the time with two young children present, who no longer find time to love each other, who maybe will never be fully happy, at least due to the presence of each other.

And then I look at my own relationship — nine-and-a-half years is almost like marriage in its own right. We live together and split some of our bills, so it definitely feels like more than just dating despite nothing legally tying us together just yet. And I love him more than anything and we get into little tiffs every now and again but generally we can have open conversations about important things and we get along pretty well as long as I don’t focus too much on the serious all the time and we can enjoy musing on absurdities of the world together. I know that for my own marriage to work, it will be a lot of work. I have to change my ways – the many things I don’t like about myself to begin with, so I’m ok with that. First, I need to keep my household clean, and uncluttered. Second, I need to find a job where I can not constantly worry about getting fired and be super depressed all the time (he isn’t so much worried about the loss of the income as he is my constant bad mood about 5-6 months into any new job.) And I need to focus on trying to feel like a woman who can be desirable instead of sabotaging myself with my very low self esteem and body image. If I could do all three of these things and not chew so loudly (he is very sensitive to food noises) and be ready on time when we’re going out instead of always 10-15 minutes late, I think he’ll be very happy with me in our marriage. That’s really ALL I have to focus on doing. The rest comes naturally. Being aware of these things doesn’t mean they are easy to do, but I know they are flaws in my character and things I need to work on anyway.

But marriages can fall apart when one person is aware of the things that upset the other person and feels they are putting an effort in to resolving these things, when the other person doesn’t make an effort or a strong enough effort to show the other person they are doing the same. This pain point in marriages can be exacerbated by the fact that so married couples just don’t talk about things. Sure, it’s easy to ask someone to clean the house, but it’s less easy for a working parent to share with a stay-at-home parent that they are too stressed out in their job and want to move into a position with less pay and less expectations. Or – things as silly as I miss when we used to get dressed up and go on dates, and now I only see you in your crappy clothes that don’t fit well at home because you’re tired all the time and quite frankly so am I. This is why marriages fall apart. People stop putting in the effort. They start becoming passive aggressive to each other on purpose or accident. That once-novel romance story has turned into a nightmare. And so many men and women get past the point of no return. They can no longer look at each other and understand how they were attracted to the other person in the first place. They long to move on to something new, something where the weight of all the years of passive aggression, poof, disappears, and they can start fresh. They can look at another person and see them not as the man who forgot to take the garbage out or the woman who was too tired from her job to be the exciting, passionate woman she once was. Starting fresh is easier than mending a wounded relationship, in theory, at least.

Divorcees are usually not happy either. Few people can manage being happy and being alone, especially after being in a committed relationship for many years. In spending time with these 40-year-old and 50-year-old divorced or unhappily married women, I wonder if there is any piece of the failings of their marriage that they see as their own faults, or if all the blame is on their former partners, or both. The common thread of conversation is that “he’s awful,” “he’s lazy,” “he’s unhelpful around the house,” et al. Or maybe there were just huge fights about how to raise the children that were unexpected which led to two people who couldn’t manage to love each other let alone spend time together. There’s a musical with a song that asks “When was Dividing Day” that is about divorce. No one goes into marriage wanting to or expecting to get a divorce, or to fall out of love. I wonder if it’s possible for two people to be so aware of their own flaws and especially the ones that rub the other person the wrong way, and to just hyperfocus on changing these behaviors as to always show the other person that you care to be the best person you can be for them. And, the second part of that is for the other person to do the same, all while being verbally appreciative of those changes in behavior, not just accepting them as part of the status quo, when the other person is still working very hard to be a better man/woman for the other person. If two people can do that, I think that a happy marriage is possible. But it requires us to go from our selfish, childish ways to becoming real adults — giving up our wants for the better of someone else, as long as that someone else is doing the very same for us. It won’t always be perfect, but as long as expectations are reasonable and two people really love each other, I want to believe it’s possible, and I want to try. I want to be the old couple that celebrates their 50th wedding anniversary with the same sparkle in our eyes that we have now when we look at each other, and see the man who I fell in love with, and who I’ll always love.

Posts navigation

Stay in Touch

About Me

The anti-minimalist: I'm the absolute worst with money. I have a shopping addiction. That's exactly why this blog exists. HECC is not a typical personal finance blog. I started it in 2007 to hold myself accountable for binge spending, a dropping networth, and lack of overall fiscal literacy. 10 years later, had achieved a networth of over $500k. Now my goal is to hit $1M by 40. Recently married and with my first kid on the way, things are about to get... interesting. I write about the intersection of mental health and money, spending & investing, and millennial personal finance.